


love, silently

by sinequanon



Series: tiny bleach [10]
Category: Bleach
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Ghosts, M/M, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-25
Updated: 2019-03-25
Packaged: 2019-12-06 23:40:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,161
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18226979
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sinequanon/pseuds/sinequanon
Summary: Ichigo felt like he lost everything when he lost his power: his friends, his family, and his purpose. Sometimes, though, support comes from unseen quarters.





	love, silently

**Author's Note:**

> The very first thing we learn about Ichigo is that he cares for the ghosts that he meets, as evidenced by the fact that he promises to bring the little girl flowers after he saves her from the bullies. This fic was inspired by that moment. Also, and I can’t believe I’m saying this, there are potential spoilers in this for the play _King Lear_.
> 
> One more thing: I must be wearing my shipping glasses today, because while I wrote this as gen, I think it could also be read as pre-slash. Feel free to take it however you like.

Love, and be silent. —William Shakespeare's _King Lear_

<> <> <> <>

_Who are you, when you feel like you can no longer be the person you’ve always been? Where do you go, when the path that had once been so clearly lit is now shrouded in shadow?_

Ichigo watched the shadows crawl across his ceiling and wondered if he’d ever feel like himself again. The insomnia was nothing new—he’d had problems sleeping on and off since his mother died—but before, he’d had his sisters to take care of, and friends to distract him from the pain. He could remember eight-year-old Ichigo, staring into the dark and straining to hear any sign that his sisters might need him long after he should have been asleep.

Back then, he’d latched onto his sisters in much the same way as they had latched onto him, and Karin and Yuzu had inadvertently helped Ichigo fill the hole their mother’s death had left in him. This time, there was no one there to help fill the empty space where his powers used to live.

(What was he supposed to do now, when they didn’t need him anymore?)

Sometimes, he felt like King Lear’s daughter Cordelia, who’d thought that she shouldn’t need to _tell_ her father how much she loved him; she’d assumed that her presence would be enough to show that she cared. As it turned out, it _wasn’t_ enough for Cordelia to just be there, and she’d been banished for it. At night, in the dark, Ichigo felt like he’d been banished, too—by Soul Society, by his friends—just because he could no longer give people what they wanted.

(Of course, Ichigo knew that his life wasn’t a Shakespearean tragedy. Cordelia had been executed—Ichigo just _felt_ dead, sometimes.)

There was a low, intermittent hum coming from down the hall, and if it had been _before_ —before Rukia, before everything—Ichigo would have gone to see which of his sisters was still awake. But he didn't now, because he didn’t need to. Nothing was wrong, and even if the big brother in him wanted to go comfort whichever twin was also having trouble sleeping, he didn’t.

Because for all that Ichigo couldn't manage to sleep the night through, he was just too _tired_ to move.

The humming stopped a few minutes later, and Ichigo finally drifted off to sleep.

<> <>

It was Mizuiro who pointed out when Ichigo inexplicably started smelling of peaches and vanilla. “Are you taking a baking class, or something?” he'd asked curiously, and Ichigo had startled at the question, because he'd thought it was just his sleep-deprived imagination.

(Ichigo didn't even _like_ vanilla.)

The smells were real, evidently, just like the humming, which had never really stopped. That meant that the fingers in his hair were probably real, too, and the gentle tugs at his clothes when he'd finally fallen asleep at his desk instead of in his bed.

And the flowers. The first, a delicate violet, in a small vase left on the desk in his bedroom. He’d assumed that Yuzu left it to make him feel better. When he asked though, she denied it, and Ichigo wasn't sure what to think.

Sometimes, flowers showed up in the vase overnight. He found them pressed between the pages of his textbooks. Once, someone left a bright orange chrysanthemum under his pillow. By chance, he spotted a lone flower in an otherwise empty field on the way to school. A girl he’d never seen before (or after) gave him the flower out of her hair. Somehow, whenever Ichigo was lonely, there were always a few petals blowing in the breeze.

To be honest, Ichigo had never been interested in flowers before. Every time he found one, though, he felt a little lighter, like maybe someone was looking out for him.

(He kind of liked it.)

<> <>

Kisuke wasn't supposed to be in the park at all, but Yoruichi had threatened to blow up Kisuke's lab—with him in it—if the scientist didn't take a break, so he'd agreed to take a short walk out of sheer self-preservation. He'd let his feet move as they would while his mind calculated this and that, and when his brain finally deigned to reconnect with his body he realized two things: one, he was surrounded by unfamiliar shrubbery; two, Kurosaki Ichigo was walking not far ahead, with a strange parade of disparate characters trailing behind him.

Kisuke's first thought was relief that Ichigo had managed to make some new friends before Benihime poked at him irritably and the scientist realized that those _weren't_ humans that were following Ichigo around.

Kisuke was moving almost before his brain processed the action. He just hoped that Ichigo would be willing to speak with him after so long.

“Hello, Kurosaki-san! How lovely to see you on this fine afternoon,” he exclaimed, all while making note of the surrounding ghosts and fighting the urge to tug Ichigo behind him. Just because the ghosts seemed harmless didn't mean they were, after all.

And there were nearly a dozen following his former student right now. His completely human, unsuspecting student.

(Kisuke cursed himself for the oversight; just because Ichigo couldn't see spirits anymore didn't mean that the spirits couldn't see _him._ )

“Did you need something, Urahara-san?” Ichigo asked, and the other man couldn’t help but notice the bags under the teenager’s eyes.

What followed was one of the most awkward conversations that the former captain had ever had, with Kisuke slowly luring Ichigo toward his home while asking inane questions like, “How are you?”and “How is school?” which couldn’t have made it any plainer that something was amiss. Ichigo, thankfully, let himself be guided anyway, but Kisuke had seen the displeased looks on the spirits’ faces as he herded Ichigo away. He was not the least bit surprised when they were followed.

“ _Can we trust him_?” someone whispered at his back. There were other voices on the wind, too, and Kisuke fought the urge to look behind him all the way back to the shop.

“ _We're watching you_ ,” came a low hiss.

“... _needs to sleep more_ …”

“ _He likes peonies best!”_

“... _such lovely hair_ …” a young woman sighed.

More voices chimed in as they walked, until Kisuke realized that Ichigo had somehow picked up _more_ spirits on the way to the shop, all offering the shopkeeper bits of advice on what Ichigo did or didn’t like, or vaguely threatening Kisuke if he made Ichigo unhappy. By the time they’d reached the front door, Kisuke was torn between being concerned and amused by the crowd. It was only after he’d ushered the younger man inside that he turned back to the gathered spirits.

 _Are you going to look after him now, or do we need to keep doing your job for you_?

Urahara Kisuke wasn’t sure who had asked the question, but it hardly mattered. He gave Ichigo’s new protectors the only answer he could.

**Author's Note:**

> My thinking here was that, Soul Society aside, Ichigo probably has a reputation when it comes to the spirits of Karakura. After all, just because we never see them interact with each other doesn’t mean that they don’t—hence, this fic.
> 
> Also, if you’re interested, two of the bits I posted today in _alphabet soup_ are for Bleach, and I’ll be responding to all of my comments ASAP.
> 
> Thanks for reading!


End file.
